Identity Politics: Controlling the Brand

School spirit?  Emerson College is threatening legal action to stop groups from using their school name—but only if the college disagrees with them.

The college has sent warning notices and legal letters, shut down one website, and threatened other sites of groups that advocate Palestinian rights or oppose the college’s protest policy. Those groups all indicated their factual relationship with Emerson College in their names and on their various communications and social media, but the college now insists that any mention of the school in that context is a trademark violation.

The college has not acted against organizations, such as the Emerson Mafia Facebook groups, that have not advocated for Palestinians or called for free speech.

“The college is trying to control communication,” said a member of the Emerson Alumni for Justice in Palestine, whose Instagram was shut down last month after a trademark complaint by the college. “They don’t want to voice that Palestinians deserve justice. It’s such a far cry from the Emerson when I was a student.”

The alumni group, which called for fellow alums to protest Emerson’s free-speech crackdown by withholding contributions and turning down invitations to speak at college events, had received a direct message in November demanding that it remove  “Emerson” from its name.

“We thought we were well within our rights, given the Emerson Mafia has never been reported for trademark infringement,” Lissa Deonarain, a 2018 graduate, wrote by email from Omaha. But last month the group’s Instagram account was taken offline by owner Meta with the notice that there was a “trademark complaint.”

“We’re disturbed by the double standard Emerson is showing, where they are trying to squash those in their community trying to push them to do better and represent what Emersonians actually want,” Deonarain said. “Sadly, this seems the norm under this leadership.”

The group, which she said has about 200 followers, is trying to get back online with a different name.

This move by the Emerson administration is another sign that the college is willing to consider legal action to silence critics. In a statement to the Berkeley Beacon last week, college spokesperson Michelle Gaseau inaccurately portrayed Discipline News as “potentially defamatory,” and administrators have hinted to Faculty Union officials that they may be subject to outside lawsuits over the activities of the union’s pro-Palestinian members.

Already, the college’s formal moves against student, alumni, and staff groups have caused an impact on those groups. Its threats of trademark violation against the student group Emerson JAZ—Jews Against Zionism—and the nonaffiliated Emerson Student Union have forced them to drop mention of Emerson College from their names on social media platforms.

“It sends the message that you shouldn’t be creating any sort of Emerson-related community without express administrative permission,” said a student member of the student union, who asked not to be named. The group has now changed its name to the Boylston Street Student Union, which, for now, remains on Instagram with 2,461 followers.

“It obviously works to distance student activists from the school, which makes it harder for people to get introduced to us as fellow students,” said the group member. 

The year-old Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine Emerson College received its own warning letter from the college’s general counsel in November. The letter claimed the group’s identification with Emerson created “consumer confusion” and was “outside the bounds of acceptable fair use.” Last week, the group removed Emerson from the title and renamed its 2,500-follower Instagram site Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine Boylston Place Alley. Its page notes, “We are an independent organization comprised of people who work at Emerson College.”

“Ultimately, they want to get these accounts shut down because we are embarrassing them,” said a member of the group, who also asked not to be named. “I think it is incredibly short-sighted for them to be attacking their own staff and faculty and alumni who are aligning themselves with the international community in saying what is happening in Gaza is genocide.”

The Emerson Mafia, which is the largest and likely the oldest unaffiliated social media group using the college name, has two Facebook groups for its listings of job leads, apartment tips, and other advice. It currently claims 17,600 and 5,900 followers.

Last spring, the moderator of the Emerson Mafia declared there would be no posts allowed discussing the Middle East. The group has apparently not been approached by Emerson College to remove the name from its sites.